October 20th, 2016

But that was just it; she held on for too long to something that wasn’t there.

Digging her fingernails in, hoping that by tightening her grip, she would be able to hold onto what still remained.

She knew it was over before he did. Her heart began to pulse in that feverish way it did when the fear crept in. Fear of loneliness, abandonment. Fear of rejection and the questions that followed. Fear of not knowing how she would learn to trust again, if at all.

Her life felt porous; it was filled with too many holes, each one intricately collecting pools of doubt, insecurity, and shame.

I don’t see a future with you.

Those seven words pierced the air like daggers, expanding the void and swallowing her into it.

Passing a window, she stole a glance at her reflection. The dark circles were now beginning to show through her concealer, her face bearing both shallowed and rounded features. Her body felt unfamiliar, shifting hesitantly beneath the weight of her wool coat.

She began reciting the same words she had quilted into the softness of her brain, poking and prodding with the same obtuseness that limited her thinking:

Too emotional. Too sensitive. Soft and round in all of the wrong places. Too meek but too overbearing.